After less than a week in second year medical school, I had survived the elimination contest exam, coming in 38th of the 650 examinees. Thus I earned my place in the amphitheater that held only 110 people, including the spare chairs wedged into the stairwell.

The cornerstone on the building — the original cornerstone — said clearly, “1568.” It was not a museum, but a living medical school building. I suppose some monks had practiced here in the building at the outset when medicines were mostly tinctures, maybe marijuana if they were lucky. 
In the ancient dissection room, were four slate tables for cadavers. They were not easy to obtain, for it was said very few wanted their bodies dissected after death. The slate tables had rivulets carefully carved into them. The floor around the tables had buckets to catch various bodily fluids.

During my dissection, the master who supervised pointed a finger at me and the three other students at our table. Tradition said that “Sylvius, of the “Sylvian Fissure” had dissected at that very table. “Sylvius,” meaning “from the woods” in Latin is “DuBois.” a common name in French. This fissure, that separates the frontal and temporal lobes, is so named in all the language in which medical terminology is known to me. He is sometimes claimed by Germany and sometimes by Holland.

I have looked into it enough to know he had a couple of “teaching voyages” around Europe, and his dates of activity would have made his presence in my dissection room very possible, indeed. The first day I was in this amphitheater, my physiology professor, from an ancient French family which alleged lineage dating back to 18th century pre-revolutionary French nobility, sidled up to my table and rapped on it, as if to focus his attention on me — before starting his lecture. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “you should be ashamed of yourself. You have taken a seat in this class away from a deserving Frenchman, who could earn a salary and raise a family.” The amphitheater could not have been more silent since 1568. I heard my own voice tremble. “With all due respect, Monsieur, I am here according to the Napoleonic Code of 1802, which opened the Universities of France to people coming from all nations who are capable of speaking the French language, so that they return with French culture to their nations of origin. I am pleased to be so honored. Vive la France!”

Pretty much any time you say “Vive la France!” in am amphitheater of students it is fairly certain that the whole amphitheater will end up cheering and shouting “Vive la France,” which they did. My poor professor was silenced, and shook his head. Nobody else said anything derogatory about my origins to me for the remainder of my education.

Later that week was my first lecture in neuroanatomy. I had loved the brain and its mystery and majesty long before starting the study of medicine. In first year medicine we were focused primarily on learning the limbs, with the brain and the head, neck thorax, and abdomen saved for the second year. Strangely I cannot remember the professor’s name. He was ancient and had to be helped up to the master’s lectern, One of the students told me he had been teaching before World War II. He had an essential tremor — head and neck, and sometimes the whole of his body. His voice seemed feeble, even with the microphone of the lectern. He wore a vest and trousers beneath his white coat.

“Mesdames, Mesdemoiselles, Messieurs … To me, falls the responsibility of teaching you the brain. When I address you, I speak to your brain. Assiduously studied, for hundreds of years, we knew little about it before World War I. The brave “poilus,” the French soldiers who protected this great nation in WWI , gave their lives — and all too often, gave us their brains. From knowing what part of their brain was missing and what they were unable to do in their twilight of their young lives, we learned what part of the brain did what. From this, we have evolved into a people whose knowledge of the brain we share with the world.”

He stared at me, and I felt as if his eyes burned holes in my flesh. “This organ is so complex, I do not teach with the pathologists’ photographs or drawings, but with simple circles of colored chalk to show you their bunches and bundles in cross-section. Learn them well, for they were learned from people’s lives and memories.” The other students told me later, when I talked to them that they were suppressing giggles. Me, I was suppressing tears. I have heard many complaints about nearly everything about medical education. But I have never heard anybody tell me about a deeper contact with being part of the research and education tradition than I did at that moment.